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New Beekeeper Queen cells and plenty of room

Rundown:
First year beekeeper
One hive started from a nuc in June.
Drew out most of the frames in a 10 frame deep
I added a 2nd deep 2 weeks ago today. I checkerboarded the boxes

Today I inspected the hive. They have not drawn out the new foundation much at all.
The bees have tons of room.
They have more nectar/capped honey than they had last inspection. I have been feeding 1:1 for a month now.
I did not see much brood, but saw some. Way less than before. I did see some eggs as well, not many though.
I saw the queen.
I also saw 3 queen cells in the middle of some frames. One was capped. The other two were open and dry inside.

Does this mean that my queen is no good any longer? The bees are trying to supercede? Should I leave it be as it is?
Should I destroy the queen cells?
Or are they going to swarm. They have plenty of room, and have never been cramped.

Maybe I added the second deep too early? Should I size them down back to one deep?
Thanks for the help

Re: New Beekeeper Queen cells and plenty of room

Maynard, the bees know what they are doing. We just try to help them.

Possible that they felt overwhelmed from all that space cause of the checkerboard? Sounds like the queen is slowing down & they want a new queen. My two hives did that this year one nuc & one full hive.
IMHO

Re: New Beekeeper Queen cells and plenty of room

How's your pollen stores? Add a patty or two if they are low. It maybe the queens not laying well enough if the nectar flows have slowed or stopped, even with feeding syrup. That also impacts comb drawing. I've found the feeding pollen patties along with the syrup keeps the queen brooding and the wax drawing much better.

Re: New Beekeeper Queen cells and plenty of room

They have pollen. A lot of pollen covering almost an entire frame.

Is it a bad idea to take the frame with the queen cells and put it into a nuc with a few other frames and see what happens?
Couldn't I always recombine? Of course this doesn't solve the situation if my queen is failing.
The bees have been pretty testy ever since I added the second deep. I felt like it was because the weather has been bad lately.